I know this isn't a Queen's website hah. But I wonder if anyone here knows of friends or relatives or just anyone who's a minority that goes to Queen's.

If I don't get into Mac, I'll have to go to Queen's. I dug in and researched the school and found that it is plagued by a lot of racism and racial discrimination issues.

Now, I am not naive and I know that racism will exist everywhere. But from what I read online and hear about this particular school it seems things are pretty bad over there.

I have contacted the school itself directly and they were nice and helpful and told me that racism is not tolerated and what not.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Originally Posted by Phoneup

I know this isn't a Queen's website hah. But I wonder if anyone here knows of friends or relatives or just anyone who's a minority that goes to Queen's.

I hope I get accepted to Mac, but if I don't I'll have to go to Queen's. I dug in and researched the school and found that it is plagued by a lot of racism and racial discrimination issues.

Now, I am not naive and I know that racism will exist everywhere. But from what I read online and hear about this particular school it seems things are pretty bad over there.

I have contacted the school itself directly and they were nice and helpful and told me that racism is not tolerated and what not.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Of course the school is going to say that...what else would you expect? Contacting school officials isn't going to be at all helpful for something like this.

Queen's is stereotypically a "white and rich" school, according to a few friends that went there. I know one person (a white person) who left because she didn't like the homogeneity and the general culture of Queen's. I've never heard that racism is especially bad at Queen's. Then again, things change pretty quickly, since student turnover is ~4 years. It depends on the students, mostly, and the sort of people you are surrounded by - but that applied to any school.

Originally Posted by Phoneup

I know this isn't a Queen's website hah. But I wonder if anyone here knows of friends or relatives or just anyone who's a minority that goes to Queen's.

I hope I get accepted to Mac, but if I don't I'll have to go to Queen's. I dug in and researched the school and found that it is plagued by a lot of racism and racial discrimination issues.

Now, I am not naive and I know that racism will exist everywhere. But from what I read online and hear about this particular school it seems things are pretty bad over there.

I have contacted the school itself directly and they were nice and helpful and told me that racism is not tolerated and what not.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Funny.
I am a part of ethnic minority myself (Korean) and I have never experienced any type of racial discrimination in Canada.
I've been here for 13 years by the way.
I don't think you need to worry about it at all.
I know a lot of friends at Queens actually and they're all Korean as well.
I've never heard anything about racism whatsoever.

If you do end up experiencing racism, just ignore it and move on.
Those racist people are not (hopefully) going to shoot you or physically offend you. It's only going to be verbal abuse in the worst case and why should this bother you?
I don't know about you, but It never bothers me to hear a random dog bark at me.

Originally Posted by Phoneup

I hope I get accepted to Mac, but if I don't I'll have to go to Queen's.

Said every Queen's student ever.

I have a friend who goes to Queens. We still talks a lot, but I have never heard anything racist about Queens from him. He is Asian btw, even though English is the only language he speaks. The only problem about Queens he told me is that they messed up his residence, so he ends up living in a apartment close to campus, and fees are covered by the university, so it was not that big a deal.

I did my first degree at Queen's (graduated in 2012), and never witnessed nor heard about any sorts of incidents involving racial discrimination. Some of my good friends there were minorities and I never heard any stories from them. Queen's is definitely a "white school" though... I experienced mild culture shock when I started at Mac because my classes were not 95% white people, haha. Oh how I enjoy the diversity here, well, at least relative to Queen's. So unless things have drastically changed in the last 2 years, I highly doubt that the university is 'plagued' by racial discrimination issues.

(Queen's is still messing up residence stuff? Wow...)

Originally Posted by kasabian

Don't worry, Mac has its share of racist people too. Except it's usually the indian people that are the worst but since ~only white people can be racist~, no one takes it into account.

I'm not sure if you are trolling or not but I will go with the assumption that you are. Just gonna say that it is a poor attempt at trolling if it is that.

Anyway to OP, I have not heard about a racism problem for Queen's from any friends, its probably just a few students but every place has that. Mac is a good school so good luck getting in and don't worry too much!

cheers.

Originally Posted by Theashe

Said every Queen's student ever.

Wut? I don't wanna start defending the school and sound like I'll go there for sure, but you do know the entering average into Queen's unergrad is 88.3%, when compared to Mac's 83% something?

If Mac wasn't in my hometown and had such a mix of ethnicities, I would definitely go to Queen's.

Pls. to the people saying they have never heard about racism over at Queen's, well I have never heard about it too and I only know about it from the online reading that I do. Here are a few.

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/educatio...sity-students/
http://myams.org/news/statement-on-r...%E2%80%99.aspx
http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/...cidents-campus
http://www.universityaffairs .ca/an...niversity.aspx
http://www.queensu.ca/news/articles/...cidents-campus

I have gotten in touch with the chair of an association that represents a group of minorities at Queen's, and he said he'll be giving me a call soon to talk about this. Really kind and nice of him!

Originally Posted by Phoneup

Wut? I don't wanna start defending the school and sound like I'll go there for sure, but you do know the entering average into Queen's unergrad is 88.3%, when compared to Mac's 83% something?

It was a joke.

Originally Posted by Phoneup

If Mac wasn't in my hometown and had such a mix of ethnicities, I would definitely go to Queen's.

To be honest, if I could go back and do it again, I probably wouldn't go to Mac. But I have friends that go to most other universities in Ontario and from what they've experienced, I can't really say where I'd want to go instead.

Hey everyone. So the execs of a few clubs contacted me. They acknowledged the problem exists and that one might feel isolated and depressed.

On the other hand one might not notice the issue. Either way, I'm 20 and I'll have to start from 1st year because credits didn't transfer, and shit like this that is out of my control is something that I don't want to deal with especially considering it might affect my education and how I view the university.

Mac did accept me when I applied as a 101 back in HS, so maybe I'm being a bit too pessimistic about my chances.

I'll update this thread in late april to early may when I hear a decision from Mac.